


Unchosen

by Umbralpilot



Category: Sleepy Hollow (TV)
Genre: Destiny sucks, Episode Tag, Family Issues, Gen, Sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 10:09:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2808605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Umbralpilot/pseuds/Umbralpilot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Mama", Abbie got some closure. But Jenny's always left behind.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unchosen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nicasio_silang](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicasio_silang/gifts).



> So I was going to do A Thing and then the damnable show did it for me, and all I had left was to write an episode tag. Because when someone is destined, everyone else isn't.
> 
> Happy Yuletide, [gabby_silang](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/yuletide2014/assignments/232982)! Hope this helps your yearly quota of Mills Feels!

After the battle, she packs her childhood back into small cardboard boxes marked with her family name in felt tips and in crayons. Everything is tender: her eyes, her lips, the old folded papers. There are old things that she doesn't think should be there, scraps of baby rhymes, photos of pigtails, a house key. But Jenny Mills collects everything and puts it back in neatly and prepares it for the shelf where it's going to wait until the world breaks or doesn't. She leaves only the spellbook out. That one's hers now. A little family heirloom, her mom's recipe book to feed her with what's good for her. 

She ought to feel lucky, she knows. Most people don't get to say goodbye past the things that she did.

Now it's time to go. Time to wake up. She tries to say goodbye to this place, too, like she's closed a circle with it and she's not going to have to ever see it again, but something about the walls clings to her and she feels like she's stretching it as she walks and pulling it with her like a second skin. Didn't she have that dream once? The walls were full of hands, but they weren't grabbing or pulling at her. They were pushing, rolling her along round the turns... Jenny shakes her head. You take it one day at a time. People at the hospital told her that often. You don't ever really get well, but you do get good days.

She makes it out into the parking lot with her heart still in and feet still under her. Abbie's out, as Abbie is, standing a little way away from her crazy little honor guard. Crane and Hawley look like they just finished a good bicker. Crane says something about how she did the ceremony but Jenny's honestly not listening right now. It's not about him. It wasn't about his demon and his prophecy and his apocalypse. She'd tell him as much if Abbie wasn't there. But Abbie...

“You took Mama's things?” Abbie says as Jenny comes up to her. Jenny rearranges the boxes in her arms. 

“It's not like they'll need them.” She shrugs a little. “But we might, when we're looking for that key.” Even Officer Mills can't argue with that logic. Abbie considers, then says “right”. And that's almost that. Almost.

Then she says, “I think you should keep the diary.”

Jenny wasn't expecting that. She wasn't really expecting to keep anything. “It'll be safer with you in the tunnels,” she points out, without really thinking about it. Abbie hesitates. Jenny doesn't know why – it seems pretty straightforward from where she's standing. “Look, Abbie, thanks. But this is Witness stuff. It belongs with you. It's not just Mama's diary.” She looks down at the little book, on top of a pile of old clothes and faded drawings. “It's a weapon.”

“Right.” Abbie says quietly. She raises her hand and puts it on the diary. Jenny can see the way she looks at it. A weapon. “Just, the way you used it, I was thinking – “ and now she looks at Jenny. “It'd be really nice to have a witch on our side who's actually at our side.” She looks at bit nervous, like she ought to, Jenny thinks, but she doesn't leave her more than a moment to be confused in before she continues. “I don't know if that's what Mama meant for us to do with it, or if she knew you were going to - “ Abbie's talking at a wall, though. Jenny's already shaking her head.

“That's not me.” Or she'd have known. Or it would've made a difference, before. “Sorry, Abbie. Someone would've known if I was. Mama would've or Corbin. They knew about you.” She's sure that Corbin would've known. He didn't know the full picture, maybe, like Crane does. But he knew where he stood. He knew what he was. 

“I almost can't believe Mama knew, all this time,” Abbie muses. “I don't know if... I should wish she could've told us. Everything could've been different.” When she looks back her eyes cloud, old silences echo in her low voice. “If we really knew what we saw in the woods that day...”

_We knew_ , Jenny thinks. Eyes open. Head up. Trust no one. And Mama was right, that's the kicker, Jenny thinks – the demons being real meant that she was right. Mama prepared her for the loony bin and for Moloch. She knew how it was going to turn out, for her. 

“No.” She shakes her head. Abbie turns to her, turns properly so they're close, and Jenny puts a hand on her wrist. “I think with you it was like it should've been,” she confesses, feeling a little bit cleaner for it. “With you, with Corbin helping you, then with Crane...”

“What about you, though?” 

Jenny laughs. “I was a lost cause.” 

She says it lightly, and she means being younger, and stubborn, and not understanding consequences and acting out and petty crimes and jail and bigger crimes and guns and going around the world and learning secrets and thinking she's crazy and knowing deep inside her somewhere that she was supposed to die even if she didn't remember that day until today. But she also means another thing. The same thing. The thing that she has to say or it's going to strangle her with thorns in her belly, in her throat. She has to say it now, before they go back out into the war.

“Abbie... someone's shone a light on you. I know you'll tell me it burns, that light, but for the rest of us it's dark, it's really dark.”

“And you're wondering,” Abbie says. “Why me and not you.”

She just says it, she doesn't even hesitate. Abbie's got all her questions down perfect, even if no one's got the answers yet. Abbie knows who she is, too. For Abbie's it's all about chasing the demons now. Fighting the demons. All about demons that are made of smoke and flesh and hellfire. Jenny's left with the shadow demons, the ones that burn only in her head. 

She looks away.

“Is that why you say you're a lost cause?” Abbie just keeps asking. She turns her wrist inside Jenny's grip and suddenly they're holding hands. Abbie's fingers tangle with hers. Jenny wants to pull off, go off. She's pulled out the thorns already, she's okay with being done. She's tired of scars that turn out to have healed over crooked bones. But Abbie... “Because the Witnesses are supposed to win this? You think not being chosen means you're not going to make a difference?”

Jenny puts her head up, though not in Abbie's direction. “I'm fighting just as hard as you - “

“I didn't say _fight_.” Abbie's hand tightens on hers. “I said _win_.”

It's nice how Abbie can talk about winning, Jenny wants to say, how her life's taught her that kind of faith, that kind of hope, that the world won't betray her in the end. But she doesn't, because maybe telling Abbie those cold things doesn't feel worth it anymore. Maybe she's scared now that Abbie will listen, and tell her she's right.

“Jenny, look at me.”

And maybe she doesn't want to do that, either, to look at Abbie and see what growing towards the light looks like, growing away from torn roots.

“You heard what Mama said,” she says in the end, because nothing she can say can hurt worse than the old silence. “About you going further than all of us. You're going places, Abbie. I know I'm going to make a difference, I just don't know what's going to come after, for me... what's going to be left.”

She hears the little hiss of pain that Abbie makes at hearing her talk like that. She still remembers being so angry at Abbie, even after they found each other again. Wanting her to hurt. She doesn't want that anymore. She's scared of hurting her, and she's scared when Abbie doesn't have an answer right away. It used to be simple. Abbie was out because Abbie lied, Abbie was a coward, Abbie ran. Abbie got a future and a life. 

Now Abbie's back. She'd _chosen_ to come back. She got all that hope and faith and now they're the best she's got.

“Being a Witness,” Jenny takes a deep breath. “Knowing there's a reason, that there's a purpose to everything you go through, not just because... just because.” _Because of someone else_ , she thinks and finally looks at Abbie, but she doesn't know if it's with anger anymore, or with something else. Something like what Mama must've felt. “The light's worth the burning, right?”

She sees the impact as the question plunges into Abbie's face, a rock thrown into a frozen stream, still crystal shattering and the currents underneath rippling and shifting to try to swallow the aftershocks. She sees how desperately Abbie wants to lie to her, lie to _someone_ , be that bigger person that says everything's a test of faith and everything's a gift. But instead all she manages is to purse her lips and take this torn-sounding breath in through her nose, and Jenny almost regrets everything she'd been thinking, _almost_ , because God but she can't remember when she'd seen Abbie look so human.

But just almost, because if Jenny knows one thing it's that she's never going to know. 

Abbie's hand moves in hers, rubbing her thumb in nervous circles on Jenny's palm. “I don't know,” she whispers finally. “I don't know.” And Jenny almost breaks, because if Abbie doesn't know, if even God's plan can't make it make sense – “But I do know burning goes both ways. Burning means I give out light, too.”

She leans her head on Jenny's shoulder as she says it, and Jenny doesn't move off, or take away her hand. She remembers hating Abbie, hating her so much, remember thinking, _you think you got out, you think you're so good, you think you're so brave and kind and loving_ – and going to jail anyway, messing things up to keep Ancitif behind bars, going on all of Corbin's crazy errands, seeing her and thinking, _you came back for me_. Because you choose to do the right thing and you damn well keep on choosing. And that's what giving light means, she thinks. Not fate. Not God. Choosing over and over and over again.

“Hey,” she says after a long, long moment. Abbie's already begun to pull herself together by the time she speaks up. She gathers herself up again and Jenny gives her a nudge in the upper arm, like a kid sister who's awfully embarassed at her drama. Abbie makes an grumbly noise, wobbles for a bit, and then they're back in balance. 

“Let's go back,” Abbie says, and she doesn't mean back home. She means back to the world outside their little family, away from grace notes and closure and moments when hope and faith are enough, back to the war. But Jenny's ready.


End file.
